Being nice to ants...

[Chud]

The Queen Ant
[...]
She's upset because you hurt her children.

So, if one were very careful never to kill (or hit) an ant anywhere in the dungeon, would the Queen Ant be more favorably disposed toward you when you eventually meet?

:-)

[HallucinationMushroom]

I know, right? It just takes one rotten At-Man to ruin it for everybody.

[buzzkill]

If she were so upset one thinks that she might fight you herself, rather than summon hordes of her children for you to slaughter.

[Derakon]

Sadly, every character ever created in Angband was given a magnifying glass by their eccentric uncle for their fifth birthday...

[Twilight]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Sadly, every character ever created in Angband was given a magnifying glass by their eccentric uncle for their fifth birthday...

This line made my day and even caused me to "unlurk" for a bit! Lurk-mode back on .

[fbas]

Originally Posted by Chud

The Queen Ant
[...]
She's upset because you hurt her children.

So, if one were very careful never to kill (or hit) an ant anywhere in the dungeon, would the Queen Ant be more favorably disposed toward you when you eventually meet?

:-)

lol. would be cool if like half-life 2 you had ant pheromones and could control them

[EpicMan]

In ADOM there was a guaranteed unique, the Cat Lord, somewhere in the dungeon (you were warned when you reached his level), who would give the ADOM equivalent of Narya/Nenya or Vilya to you if you had not killed any cat monsters (f symbol like in Angband) up to that point. If you had killed any cat, even accidentally (triggering an explosive trap that killed it, etc) he would be hostile and would become much more powerful with every cat killed, so that unless you managed to avoid killing cats (difficult; I've never managed it) you had to quickly find the exit and hope not to get murdered.

The main issue is that you pretty much had to read spoilers to understand the system (which was true of many things in ADOM, it's as bad as Nethack in that regard). As roguelike player MMO is to kill anything that you don't have to run from, it was extremely unlikely you would learn not to kill cats on your own.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Not only that, but so often, you're not given that much of a choice. The monsters come after *you*. And on the early levels, some of those cats pose a decent risk.

You *could* maybe do this with Maggot, Fang, and Grip, simply because they are uniques and therefore less prone to accidental killing. But it's a terrible idea to do this with an entire class of critters.

[EpicMan]

And even then, you would need some way to tell new players "If you kill Maggot and his dogs then Bullroarer becomes super-powerful, but if you don't then he gives you a magic mushroom". You could give a hint a la UnAngband but that would be annoying to experienced players. You could put it in the help files but normal players who aren't like me aren't going to read much in the help files.

One of the ways Angband surpasses other major Roguelikes is that spoilers are not required for a realistic chance of success (defining success as going far in the game), it is one of the most learning-friendly roguelikes out there. In other words, new players don't make it down to Sauron, beat him, go down the magic staircase, and instantly die because they didn't bring a rusty chain mail with them when they descended.

Yes, many monsters will kill the unwary. But that is an easy lesson to learn, and each individual monsters' nastiness is part of the lesson of "if it can kill you, it will". To which the obvious and logical response is to avoid (via resistances, escapes, healing, etc) being in a position to be killed by something.

There are a few specific monsters that will kill you outright if you let them get in attack range (mystics (melee) and gravity hounds), but those are unusual cases you encounter long after you have been taught to be wary of new monster types.

About the only spoiler-required thing in Angband that I can think of is the effect of weapon weight on melee damage (the penchant for very heavy weapons to get lots of damage-multiplied hits) and that does not really affect a player's ability to beat the game like some of the "do things exactly like this in the endgame room or you die" mechanics found in Nethack and ADOM.

[Derakon]

Not just the "negative" secrets, but also the "positive" secrets. Your average NetHack newbie is not going to think of writing Elbereth in the dust, will have a hard time price-identifying stuff, won't think to dip longswords in fountains, doesn't have a clue how to manipulate the blessed/uncursed/cursed system, etc. If you compare a veteran player's game to that of a newbie, it's insane how many things the veteran does that the newbie quite simply has no reasonable way of knowing about.

The backlash against this kind of thing is one of the main reasons why some players advocate automatically spoiling monster memory in Angband. It's one of the few areas where a lack of knowledge makes a huge difference between newbie play and veteran play.